Attributed to Esaias Boursse Amsterdam 1631 - 1672 at sea

Little is known about Esaias Boursse's life. After a trip to Italy he settled in Amsterdam in about 1653, leaving in 1661 as a midshipman in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He returned to Amsterdam in 1663, and embarked on a second trip overseas in 1672, only to die aboard ship the following year.

In this work, Boursse depicts a prosperous middle class couple together with two nurses(?) in an interior, feeding their twin infants. In interior scenes such as this the artist was clearly much influenced  by the work of his Delft contemporaries Pieter de Hooch and Cornelis de Man.  Like them, Boursse shares an interest in the depiction of interior space and light. His well-appointed interiors clearly reveal his awareness of the traditions then being established in Delft by his younger townsmen, but with a stronger interest in the depiction of the quieter moments of every day life and domestic labour. The detailed and accurate depcition of every day utensils and bed linen seems also to have fascinated him - compare, for example, his Woman cooking beside an unmade bed of 1656 in the Wallace Collection, London. The setting of a large fireplace also recurs in other works by the artist, for example, his Woman sewing (formerly in the Wesendonck Collection, Berlin) or the Woman feeding a child by a fireplace (Bonn, Museum, 1927 catalogue, no. 23).